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I really enjoyed listening to Hebron. That is just a ridiculous (amazing) ton of notes. The more notes you play, the happier you make me. I am excited to see this progress through the season. Already gorgeous clarity and balance in the WW's. Exciting!

Agreed on the 3rd movement of the Hindemith. That fast tempo removes the melancholy mood of the piece and just turns it into a technical exercise. In particular, the flute solo (while a ton of notes and really high) should be this nice little buoyant, delicate theme floating on top, but now sounds like a furious race to the finish line. Good on the flute player for keeping up with the brisk tempo that was set. Hopefully, their judges advised them to SLOW it down for future performances.

I saw Westlake on the livestream of the State Wind Ensemble Festival. They sounded incredible - lots of lovely nuance and clarity on some very difficult music that they made sound effortless, particulary on Barber's School for Scandal. I expect that they'll be a very strong contender to advance from their region and also out of TMEA Area E based on the performance that I heard.

I was at Region 26 last night and the last block had the big 4 Leander ISD schools one after the other. What a block! Just my thoughts... Cedar Park - seems like they are starting to pull away from the others a bit. The show is now getting some good visual and musical polish on it. They've added some very nice visuals that help to sell the Romeo & Juliet theme- you really get that Montague/Capulet animosity. There are some ferocious chords particularly in the final movement that just make you want to cry, they're so gorgeous. The brass in the ballad are just right and the woodwind run in the opener is now really clean and clear. They're just achieving a level of refinement that is getting very high. As far as who's next, right now, I really have Leander, Vandegrift, and Vista Ridge all right together. They're just all so good. Leander - they have come so far from the beginning of the season. Lots of power and intensity, but subtle when they need to be. This is a hard show! Visually, lots of body movement that is almost but not quite there yet. Musically, though, wow they are sounding quite good. The woodwinds were just on fire. Their ballad (mvt. 3of of Hindemiths Symphonic Metamorphosis) has a lovely juxtaposition of brass in the backfield playing the melody and woodwinds in the front doing fantastic runs. It sounds great, y'all. They also have great speed and show off all the sections nicely on Shostakovich #10, mvt. 2. Very nice guard, also. Really help to convey the underwater theme nicely. Vandegrift - it was very good! They have perhaps the best guard of the LISD schools. Huge and effective! I love the black and white swan flags they use in the opener. Very sharp work. The band definitely brings the intensity and volume and drill velocity. There are few spots where I feel as though the balance of the chords could be a little bit more refined. They have some sweet moments like the snowflake set in Journey Through the Snow that are just sublime. Vista Ridge - every time I see them, it seems as though the volume and intensity have been increased 10x - which is great! The entire trumpet section are just spot on. So crisp and clean and clear and focused. Delightful! The soloists and solis are magnificent. The dance team of Scheherezades are great and have added some effective props. They just added a bunch of great little touches that really help to bring out the character and flavor of this music. Also, best drum break of the day with both fantastic marching during it and wonderfully intense drumline playing. Who knows what will happen at Area D? It is sure to be a great contest, no matter what. I'll be out of town and will have to miss it, which may be OK for me as I'd be a nervous wreck. Haha!

Just wanted to post a few brief thoughts on this great contest. It was a super tight battle for the win between Clements and Ronald Reagan. Reagan won 1st in prelims and took most of the captions (Music, GE, Guard, Percussion), and Clements won 1st in finals and took most of the captions (Music, Visual, Guard). Clements scored 84.23 in finals and Reagan 84.10. It was extremely hot during the day, but cooled off nicely during finals with a slight breeze and you could really tell a difference in performance level. Every single band stepped up their game immensely from prelims to finals. It was a great evening, overall. Fredericksburg (3A Class Champ) was about halfway through their exhibition when the rains came pouring, so the full finals retreat was unfortunately cancelled. But, at least we made it through the finals with good weather! A few brief thoughts... Clements - Wow! One of 2 Star Trek-themed shows of the day (7th place Copperas Cove did a nice job on the other one). Clements show was called "Resistance is Futile" and all the band members wore Borg-style headpieces, rather than shakos. The guard and drum majors were in the traditional gold, red, blue, and yellow Federation shirts. Such a well-played show with great marching precision and wonderful velocity, plus some really snappy rifle work by the guard. The woodwinds sounded great on all the fun little flurries from the Star Trek Into Darkness soundtrack. Loved the end when the 2 Borg band members climbed to the drum major podium to overthrow the Captain. So fun! Ronald Reagan - Loved this! My favorite show of the day! So weird and wonderful and full of classic Reagan-ness! First of all, love their new uniforms with all the splashes of neon green and especially the swatch of neon green down the middle of the plume! Very sharp looking. But, oh my, what a show! They sound so wonderful and blended and strong on all of the Medea's Dance of Vengeance by Barber. They have some just incredible mellophone rips in the opener and there is a moment in Medea's Dance where the woodwinds converge in a circle and just rip-roar on some ferocious technical licks but play it so very BALANCED! Ah! The light touch of Adagio for Strings is juxtaposed so beautifully with how they handle all that glorious dissonance from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. They sound amazing. And, then, there are the impeccable individual marching fundamentals which is not easy since the velocity of the show is at light speed! Great guard, also! Loved the mushroom dresses things! Bravo! Cedar Ridge (Exhibition Band, since they were the contest hosts) - Truly, they have arrived! I so hope and really think they have a great shot to make finals at Grand Nats. Everything about them is just with such purpose! They just keep coming at you with all the wonderful moon theme and it's all so lovely. Gorgeous flute soloist, wonderful singer on Moon River, where the band lays down on the field - what a moment! I loved the snippets of Van Morrison's Moondance, too - this band has fun! Lovely marching and just beautiful controlled and LOUD hits that make you sit up and take even more notice. The guard is super - especially when they change into the orange dresses which I think are supposed to be the Greek goddess Artemis with her bow and arrow. Stunning. McNeil - Love the Mr. Rogers Garden of Your Mind song in the preshow. Nice soloists on Dance of the Tumblers and I love how snippets of Pure Imagination come out later. Also, I like how the snares play basses for the first half of the show to make for 9 basses on the field. The guard did great with the flower umbrellas, especially during some windy finals conditions. Best McNeil show I've ever seen. Westwood - I can see why they won the award for 5A Visual in prelims. They are a huge band and do some incredible rotating blocks and passthroughs along with some great coordinated visuals exceptionally well! They also sound big and bold and brassy on Shostakovich's Festive Overture in the opener. Like McNeil, best Westwood show I've ever seen. Again, great finals and everyone should be very proud of their performances! Much kudos also to the Cedar Ridge program for a superbly-run contest.

Despite the rain, it was a super day of marching band! I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved Bowie! GE: super - the brass buzzing on mouthpieces before it started is genius. Visual: stunning. Their interval spacing is just so good! Guard: magnificent. And, music: wow! Really wonderful precise technical woodwind playing throughout especially on the opening of Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Just such great sounds from all sections. Adding this to my list of of my all-time favorite shows. Couple of other gushes: -Westlake was great, too! Really fun Venice-themed show. I loved the impromptu parade in the middle. -Vista Ridge- huge improvement in just the few days since LISD Festival of Bands! I feel like they turned up the volume a ton. Probably also the best soloists and solis of the day, IMO. The violin solo makes me so happy! -Vandegrift has the piece of he day that will not leave my head: Battle on the Ice by Prokofiev. So mesmirizingly beautiful.

I do the same thing! Tomorrow is going to be great fun! Good luck to all the bands competing!

I would mostly agree with your rankings. From the front, I would just have perhaps Vandegrift and CP tied yesterday. CP just comes out of the gate with VOLUME. And, man the woodwind run in the opener is just jaw-droppingly impactful and their top-to-bottom balance is tremendous throughout. Agreed that Vandegrift is also on fire. Certainly, their ballad when the band locks in on that snowflake set during Journey Through The Snow from The Nutcracker is gorgeous! Vista Ridge - beautiful arrangement of Scheherezade. Fantastic sololists (loved the violinist!), superb and really impactful marching during the drum break. My favorite part is how great the woodwinds sound using the Arabian dance from the Nutcracker to blend in with The Young Prince and Princess from Scheherezade. Stunning! Leander - great underwater concept of Beneath the Surface. Beautiful guard - some great soloists - nicely done! Rouse - Potential to be captivating, just needs a little more time for the components to gel. Overall, an utterly fantastic evening of marching. This was my 11th year of LISD Festival of Bands and in 11 years, I have never seen these groups so prepared, be so far along, and perform so much of their shows this early in the season!

October 5th - Vista Ridge Marching Festival - http://www.vrhsband.org/marchingfestival.html October 12th - Texas Marching Classic - http://www.texasmarchingclassic.com/

Agreed on Vandegrift! Can't wait for them to add the final movement. I think this will indeed be stunning by season's end. Cedar Park is also looking/sounding extremely good, as well. I saw them at their football game last week and was very impressed + gorgeous ensemble balance. I am going to Leander ISD Band Night on Monday to watch all 5 LISD schools do their shows live - always a great evening and nice to watch without the chatter of the football game all around.

This is utterly fantastic! A 5 minute drive from my house!

Thanks for sharing! Lovely show!

Cedar Park - Celebracion - a perfect show in a non-state year for them to "celebrate" their state championship from last year. Still vintage CP moments, but with a bit lighter touch. You can never argue with La Fiesta Mexicana. Also those trumpets in Adios Nonino. Wow. Plano East - real handbells on the field! Just lovely sounds all around. Great soloists. Spring- the tents didn't bother me at all. I loved it! Great guard, too!! Bowie- jaw droppingly great moments. Ridiculous hard drill, face melting chords, gorgeous opening statement on the Great Gate of Kiev! And, who puts Fetes by Debussy on the marching field? Bowie, because they have the WW's to pull it off. When they turned around at the end during Jupiter with those purple LEDs glowing, what a moment! Reagan - so many lovely vintage Reagan moments!! They march so well! They create such beauty from negative space. The tradional vs. LED plume clarinet battle is very well done. Plus, the double tonguing trumpets near the end are great! Westlake- The power!!! I've never heard Westlake play with such raw beautiful power before! The woodwinds are a technical marvel and make Festive Overture sound easy. It is one of my favorite pieces, so it's recapitulation as a waltz following the tradional had me grinning! Drunken trumpet player- you are my hero, sir! Those notes!!! Not to mention the drunken band marching was inspired! Flower Mound- glad they had their moment at BOA San Antonio! The circus band was such a highlight. They play nearly as well as their fellow Lewisville ISD schools. Hendrickson - Dr. Atomic - they handled Salvation is Created amazingly. Leander- the Ritual - nice departure from their traditional method and it paid off! Lastly, CTJ's Eve is now one of my favorite shows off all time! From the cool trees, stunning marching and body movement, beautiful oboe soloist, outstanding guard work, amazing wall of sounds, and of course, the mesmerizing control of Polovtsian Dances everything was just beautiful. I had the privilege of seeing it 4 times in person this season and every time I was left with goosebumps long after the end. Thank you CTJ for giving me a marching band memory I'll never forget. Congrats to everyone on such amazing seasons!! Every year, I am astounded anew by the incredible talent here in the Lone Star State and I am so thankful we get to experience it each fall! God Bless Texas!! EDIT: Also, including Westwood. A combination of Scheherezade, Kashmir, and Uninvited = awesome!

I agree! I was really amazed by Plano East last night. Beautiful show! I would not be surprised at all to see them in the top 10 Tuesday night.

That show from The Colony was truly incredible! I'm so glad I got to see that show in person - it makes me so happy that you brought it up! The visual depictions of the train in the drill were marched spectacularly and I loved the pictures of the train in the backfield that started out far apart but come together at the end. Brilliant!

It's just really tough. I think about this all the time and with the current model, no matter which way you configure it, there's always going to be some really good band that ends up sitting home just because the numbers didn't work out quite right. I always think of the positive is, what a good problem to have! The level of high quality of all bands in general in this state is just ridiculous.

If I remember correctly, that alignment had Region 9 (Conroe, Spring, Klein ISDs) as part of Area D along with Central Texas and had Region 12 (North East ISD) in Area E along with the Katy/Cy-Fair schools. I actually liked that alignment myself. However, I cannot really remember how Areas B and C were configured then. Were Duncanville and Bell both in Area B at that time?

I'm old too! I was there then in 2000 and wow, that was a brilliant show from Leander that year. Ms. Drinkwater was the assistant director there and that show made me a huge fan of Rimsky-Korsakov.

Spectacular event! Much thanks to the TXBands staff for the incredible coverage! Also, to Yamaha, Mr. Video and the UIL for the live stream. 2 days full of live band just a mouse click away was awesome! So proud of the Cedar Park band! Amazing performances yesterday! Y'all blow me away every time! I was so glad that the camera on the live feed panned back out during finals to capture that awesome 4-to-5 pass through. Congratulations to all the bands that competed! I was impressed with the high quality of everyone's performances. Between these past 2 days and BOA San Antonio this past weekend, what a great showcase of Texas marching band we have had!

What an amazing group of finalists at this event!

Longhornsax said just about everything that I was thinking about this contest. Thank you! I would just like to add major props to the clarinet section of Vista Ridge. The soloist on Flight of the Bumblebee was incredible, but also the clarinet section as a whole really had a nice, rich and robust sound on many of those technical runs that I thought was absolutely gorgeous.

Here is a link to the Star-Telegram with Reg. 7's results: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/22/34...7XBqfc.facebook

That is an excellent show. I really enjoyed that. Their woodwinds sound incredible on Marriage of Figaro.

This was a great contest! Great venue and near perfect weather for marching band! Vandegrift - Wow! Truly impressive! We did not get there in time to see their prelims performance, so when they did the Class 4A awards, I thought it would be a given that Cedar Park would win that portion, so I was shocked at that point. But when I saw them in finals, I understood. They sound and look amazing! There is just a polish and refinement to this show that was a cut above everyone else. They play all this great Shostakovich with just a kind of relaxed and well balanced effort. The brass display ample power and subtle nuance with ease. Additionally, the exposition of their woodwinds is excellent. Beautiful balance by the woodwind ensemble during the technical portions of Festive Overture. I agree with the above poster - I could easily see this show doing very very well at 4A state. Cedar Park - Also, very impressive! Talk about intense! Their drill is marched very nicely with lots of exposed triangles and rotated blocks and I love the 4-to-5 pass through during the beginning of the final movement. Lots of great visual touches by this band executed very well. The show is full of those classic Cedar Park moments where the brass just blows your face off, which I think that the dissonance of Mahler certainly calls for. The woodwinds have a very nice little technical run towards then end, but I wish we didn't have to wait so long to hear them do their thing. And giant M formation for Mahler at the end is just a wonderful stamp at the end of great show. It will be lovely to see how these 2 fine programs progress through the end of the season. Westlake - I can't recall the title of the show, but it has a great amount of voiceovers from famous people saying famous inspirational quotes. I thought this show was big and bold and a little more in your face that what we normally see from Westlake. My only regret is that the tarps that they ran out at different points of the show that also had the quotes on them kept me too distracted, though! I kept watching them to make sure no one tripped (which someone did during prelims) and then during finals the stadium lights reflecting on the shiny tarps obscured the writing anyway. I just feel like I could have appreciated this great show even more without them. Lake Travis - This is, without any doubt, the best show that Lake Travis has ever done. Truly, they have come to play this year and are seriously eyeing a spot at the state marching contest. Their show is called The Silk Road and has an Eastern/Arabian theme which they convey wonderfully. They play with a great balance, achieve nice power, and their marching is clean, clean, clean. I also love the red plumes - looks fantastic! I loved the flute solos on the Scheherezade parts. Great job! Round Rock - This band is enormous! As always, their drumline is smoking! The guard looks resplendent in their yellow dresses and I thought they had some very nice impactful moments with the blue flags at the beginning and the golden sun flags during the middle that really elevated the GE of this show. The band moves so well and achieves some great set pieces with all of the sun sets (sunsets?) LOL. I just felt like musically their level did not match their marching level in some parts, which may have held them back in finals a bit. Ronald Reagan - I have always been a huge fan of the Reagan band and this year is no exception. I absolutely loved it. The show is called Spaces and I love the way the guard does a great job of catching your attention in the empty spaces the band creates. The little brass quartet at the beginning to start us out on Beethoven's 7th is quite nice and their musical moments do not disappoint. My highest goosebump moment of the day was during their ballad (Debussy's Engulfed Cathedral). Virtually the entire band comes to the front with most of the brass in 2 lines on a raised platform. Their gorgeous sounds just blew me away. What a stunning ballad. All the while the guard is doing some great work with purple flags on a white tarp. The show ended on a bit of an odd place musically, but I think that there are probably a couple of more minutes to the show that we'll see at BOA SA. This contest was on a strict 8:00 clock. Leander - Russia! Featuring the music of Tchaikovsky 4 and 6. This is the best Leander show I have seen in a long time! The woodwinds are the MVPs of this show, throwing off technical run after technical run with great volume and clarity. I loved the French horn solo, too. The marching was very tight and well executed and I thought the whole band block formation during the high step marching section was very Russian and very well done. It was an exciting show and the ending with the band members pulling out the blue, white, and red flags to make the Russian flag was brilliant! Connally - Their show is called Arabesque and is kind of similar in theme to Lake Travis. They did a great job, but it's hard not to compare the shows with similar themes and these 2 bands performed back to back in finals. I just found the Lake Travis show to be just a bit tighter and bit more polished at this point. Hendrickson - This band has gotten huge also! Great to see! I loved hearing A Mighty Fortress on the field during their finale and they brought great power and control to it. McCallum - Swan Lake - The entire show is Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Loved the couple of sets meant to appear as the sitting swan. As for not being in the finals, I was disappointed not to get to see Westwood again. I thought that they had a wonderful show. The title is Harvest and I found the theme to be conveyed extremely well and they even had a plume change switching from black to orange plumes for their harvest moon set in their ballad. Overall, a fantastic night of marching band and a great little preview of some of the top 4A bands in Area D. Also, don't forget about Vista Ridge - I think you have to consider them in the Area D mix. Their show has cleaned up 1000 times in the last few weeks and they are sounding great on some beautiful pieces. The Enigma Variations sounds tremendous and the clarinet soloist gave us a darn-near perfect Flight of the Bumblebee.

Full prelim results, which became finals results after finals got cancelled. What a breakout year for Flower Mound HS! 86.9 - Flower Mound (5A) 85.95 - Mansfield (5A) 85.2 - Hebron (5A) 82.67 - Colleyville Heritage (5A) 79.0 - Keller Central (5A) 78.1 - Frisco Wakeland (4A) 76.35 - Grapevine (5A) 73.55 - Mansfield Summit (4A) 73.2 - Lewisville (5A) 69.15 - Trophy Club Byron Nelson (4A) 66.3 - Burleson Centennial (3A) 66.0 - Abilene Cooper (5A) 64.5 - Holliday (2A) 59.7 - Cisco (2A) 53.2 - Grandview (2A) 52.6 - Rio Vista (2A) 52.15 - Tyler John Tyler (4A)